Capital Reef Day 3: Cathedral Valley

We were headed for the Cathedral Valley portion of Capital Reef park today (Monday, March 20^th). 

Petroglyphs on the rock face.

We stopped at the Visitor Centre and enquired about the road out to Cathedral Valley BEFORE we went, which likely saved us yet another abort of our plans, as the river ford on the south end of the loop is not passable right now.  We opted to do an “out and back” on a portion of the north end of the loop instead. Before we headed out to Cathedral Valley, we stopped at the Petroglyph display on Hwy 24.  There’s a boardwalk where several different panels of petroglyphs are displayed.  It was very interesting!  The drawings are from about 1300 AD and depict life of the Fremont peoples who inhabited the area at the time.

The road to Cathedral Valley is unpaved and very rough.  High clearance and 4WD is recommended and I’d say that’s pretty accurate.  We averaged about 15 mph so it took us about 2-1/2 hrs to drive the 16 mile access road out and back. The truck was not super happy.  If we had a “suspension light” on the truck, it would have come on today!

The scenery on the road out could only be described as desolate.  The colours are more muted and the erosion more advanced, so the hills are softer, less rocky.  

We came across cows grazing; but on what we’re not sure! The vegetation seems to be desert scrub brush. 

We met Moe, Larry & Curly, who provided us with our daily dose of cute.

Temple of the Moon: That's John in the orange shirt, to the left of the sign

The temples, when we got there, were massive!   The layering in the rock looked entirely gothic.  It resembled carvings we had seen on European churches; some of the features looked like spires and naves.  John commented on how the front faces of both of them looked like cathedrals, and it was amazing how TALL they were!

Look at the "carvings" in the rock!!!

Temple of the Sun: Dawn is in this picture, you just can't see her to the right of the sign.

Mountain of Glass; weird!!!  Totally looked like glass!

 John was glad that we had opted to do the drive out to the monuments as opposed to the hike to the overlook which would have us looking down upon the temples. He felt we wouldn’t have appreciated how massive they were without actually being down with them.

Looking back at Temple of the Sun (foreground) and Temple of Moon (background left) 

We passed four cars the whole afternoon; 3 of which were going as slow as we were, and one (from Utah) who blew by us in a cloud of dust and sand.  John says this is not an area of the country in which he would consider buying a used truck!

On the way back, we noticed that there’s a green tinge to the cottonwood trees now as he buds are starting to open!  Spring is coming to Wayne County/Capital Reef .  We’ve enjoyed our stay in this area.

Tomorrow we head to Moab,UT